CLIFFSIDE THEOLOGY
Philippians 4:4-7, Luke 3:7-17
"Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?" --Luke 3:7
This morning, I want to revisit a word I think I used last year in a sermon or two during Advent season, the word: apocalypticism. Say it with me kids...no, just kidding. How's that for an impressive word? Drop that at a cocktail party, and see how impressed people are. Apocalypticism. The thing is, you can't really understand the New Testament--or the Old Testament for that matter--unless you understand that word, what it means, how that concept is part of the worldview of the scriptures. And if you're not sure what it means, I'll explain it to you this morning by means of a joke. I usually try to stay away from telling corny jokes, but this morning, I'm going to make an exception.
OK, here's how it goes. A truck driver is driving down a mountain road and loses his brakes. He approaches a curve and is going too fast to be able to negotiate it, so the truck goes out of control, and starts heading toward the edge of a sheer cliff. At the very last moment, the truck driver manages to escape from the cab of his truck and grab hold of a little branch sticking out from the edge of the cliff, and he watches his truck tumble down and hit the ground below. And there he is, hanging onto a little branch. He waits a few moments, and then looks up, heavenward. "Is there anyone up there?" he asks.
"I'm here," comes a reply.
"What should I do?" asks the truck driver.
"Let go," the voice says. So the truck driver pauses there, hanging from the cliff, and thinks. Then he looks up again: "Is there anyone else up there?"
Apocalypticism is, in essence, cliffside theology. It's living with the understanding that something of ultimate consequence is happening or about to happen--like hanging on a cliffside. And that in light of that, it's understanding that our choices are consequential. They have consequences--perhaps ultimate consequences--because something ultimate is "at stake." In a way, it's the notion that we're all hanging on the cliffside of history.
Here's another way to say it: how many of us...I won't make you raise your hands...how many of us listen to the safety instructions, you know before your plane is about to take off and the flight attendant comes out with that seat buckle thing, or the safety video comes on; I mean who pays attention? I usually just keep reading the paper. Nothing's at stake. But if the engine were on fire, and we were going down--how would that affect the quality of our attention? How many would listen then? Something urgent is at stake that informs our actions and our choices. That's apocalypticism.
*****
You need to know that in order to understand that this is in many ways the mindset of people who wrote the New Testament--people who thought that the end of history was near; that the Messiah prophesied by the Old Testament would arrive, imminently. Something of ultimate consequence was about to happen--or was in the process of happening, now.
Paul writes in the section of his Letter to the Philippians that Barb read this morning these familiar words: "Rejoice in the Lord always, and again I say rejoice...for the Lord is at hand." Paul believed that the Messiah had come, in Jesus Christ, and that his return was immanent; he believed it would happen in his lifetime--so rejoice that you wait as one who's been saved.
And yet--waiting on a cliffside is a scary thing, isn't it? It certainly was for the people who lived in the time of Jesus and John the Baptist. The world is on fire! And as the prophecy goes, when the Messiah comes he will purge the world with fire. "For he is like a refiner's fire." As we heard in this section of the Messiah that Bryce just sang, "Who shall stand when he appeareth?" Will I make the team?
During our travels in the Holy Land last month, one of the places we visited is a place called Qumran. It's a spot near the Dead Sea where the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered--some Bedouin shepherds one day happened upon these scrolls hidden in a jar they found in a cave. They were some ancient texts from the Hebrew Bible. And they were written, or copied down, by a community living nearby called the Qumran Community, a monastic, apocalyptic community waiting out there for the world to end. They were people who had come out to the wilderness to escape the world; there was the sense that the world was so rotten that things couldn't possibly keep going like they were.
Remember I told you the story a couple weeks ago about Herod the Great building a mountain for himself, and putting a palace for himself on top of it, making hundreds of slaves go fetch water for him up on the mountain, when the people below barely had enough water to survive? There was the sense that the world had become just so rotten, God could no longer sit by and let it happen. So these people went out to the desert to prepare themselves for that day that was about to come, the day of wrath when God would come and straighten everything out; the Day of the Lord, when every mountain would be made low, every valley exalted.
Interestingly these people, these very hard-core monastic folk, purified themselves six and seven times a day--there were ritual baths everywhere in the ancient ruins we saw--and keep in mind, this is in the middle of the desert. They were constantly purifying themselves in case that moment came when they would be called to appear before the Lord.
Some say that John the Baptist was actually part of the community there at Qumran. What we do know is that John had become a holy man of some renown--he had managed to attract a number of disciples. And people knew he was out there, baptizing and preaching in the wilderness. Many thought that they could go out to him and get a free pass, for the time when that Day came; they could get a ticket to ride from him.
So we might think of these people headed out to see John there in the wilderness, as people headed for the fire exits.
And you know what John says to them, when they came? "Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?" Not a nice guy. John would probably have flunked his pastoral care class. "You brood of vipers," he says. He calls them a bunch of desert snakes. Because they were scared of what was to come. But they are not wanting really to change their lives. They are people whose only interest is in self-preservation.
It's almost like John is saying--and this might really help put apocalypticism into our present, modern frame of mind--this is a very scary thought. It's almost like John says to them: "who told you I have the vaccine?"
And if it's not immediately evident why that's scary--then just go onto the Internet and look up bird flu. I use that example not just for homiletical flourish. I mean we joke about bird flu these days--but it's very possible that a day will come when it will certainly be no joke. We don't know. There are many who feel it is possible, some who say likely that in the next 5-10 years bird flu will become a pandemic like one in 1918 that killed between 20 and 40 million people. They don't know--biology is unpredictable. No one knows for sure.
But what if that happened? What if that were upon us, and our community? How would you respond? What would that crisis do to the values you say you practice? Would you rush to the local pharmaceutical plant on the rumor they have a vaccine?
You see, that's what John's talking about. Are you going to be motivated by self-preservation, or some deeper set of values?
Are you going to be ready when that day comes?
Our values as human beings are tested on the cliffside. We may say we practice certain values, but our real character is revealed when you stand on the deck and face the lifeboat that holds ten, and you are standing with thirty. What do you do? Our real values are revealed when we face the divorce, the death, the financial crisis. As parents, the true test of our parenting, the values we've instilled in our kids, comes when they're in the car and they start passing around the pills...or the bong...or whatever.
That's why it's so important that we're here. Why it's so important to get what we get here, this teaching...the gospel--it's here where we get the inoculation, really. May not matter as much now, as it will then, if that day comes when your values are tested. There may be a time when these values that we try to instill in ourselves, and our children, the values of the gospel--make the difference between life and death, or between the death of your soul, and some greater life.
You see, I think one of the problems of our modern life is that we have no sense of the apocalyptic, even though we all are hanging on the cliffside of history, whether we realize it or not. We have so little sense that there is something at stake in history, in time, although if we read the paper carefully, that will cure us of it quickly. But I find myself getting more frustrated with the traffic going to the mall than I do with what is going on in Iraq. Where is the rending of garments over the tragedy unfolding in Iraq--wherever you are politically on that question? We care more about rising gas prices than global warming--what's up with that? Do we have a sense that we each have to make urgent moral choices having to do with anything like ultimate consequences that loom ahead of us in history?
T.S. Eliot, in his great poem Four Quartets, describes our modern age this way: we are people distracted from distraction by distraction. See, we'd realize how distracted we are if we weren't so distracted. I remember listening over and over in college to that Dire Straits song, "Money for Nothing"; remember, Sting's voice comes on at the beginning of the song: "I want my MTV." As long as we have those distractions--the video games and cozy living rooms and presents under the tree, the world can burn.
*****
I remember a quote I saw once on a T-shirt, and it was a quote attributed to Dante, so maybe that's why I took notice (and it's not exactly an accurate quote of Dante, but we'll get to that.) Anyway, the quote goes something like this (I actually think it was in a speech John F. Kennedy gave once). It goes: "The hottest place in hell is reserved for those who in times of great moral crisis refused to make a decision."
Well, the quote is not quite true to Dante's poem, the Divine Comedy--because actually, in Inferno, in Dante's depiction of hell, that place is not the hottest place in hell. It is in fact a place that is neither hot nor cold. But it is probably the worst place you can end up in the afterlife, because it is a place that is neither in heaven nor hell. It's the spot just outside of the gate of hell--it's called the place of the Cowards (or the Neutrals), people who made no passionate commitment in their lives, and whose only commitment was to themselves; people who followed the cause of the moment. Their destiny in hell is constantly running in a phalanx chasing a flag, aimlessly wandering and stung by bees. It's a place for people unwanted by either heaven or hell, because they made a choice for neither; their only commitment was to themselves.
"You brood of vipers."
Those are the kind of people John is facing in the wilderness (and I'm so glad we are not like that of course): people following that banner out into the wilderness, wanting to save themselves.
And you almost want to say to them, you know: Life is not just about survival. Life is about...life.
*****
"What then shall we do?" that's the money question, isn't it. In verse 12 that's what people ask John. If you can't give us the vaccine, how do we get it?
Here's the answer. Ready? It's a very simple answer.
Those with two tunics, give to those with none. Those with more than enough food, give to those who don't have enough.
If you're oppressing people, don't blame it on the system--just stop doing it.
The antidote to this is to make a passionate commitment to the good.
John says: if you want to save yourself, save someone else. The way we vaccinate ourselves from whatever might be coming--from whatever exigency might be unfolding for us in our brief sojourn here, from whatever might kill our soul--is to make a passionate commitment to some cause other than yourself.
That means not just giving a little to charity to assuage our guilt. It means giving ourselves in charity. It doesn't mean just giving a little gift to Crisis Ministries of Princeton and Trenton--it means going there and being with the people they serve. It means being passionate for justice.
And the beauty of the gospel is that we don't always have to agree on what that thing is, that we should be passionate about. My passionate commitment may be opposed to your cause. But the beauty of the gospel means having the humility to say that I may be wrong in my commitment; I may be headed to hell--but I know that the worst existence to have, now or ever after, is one that is morally neutral; a life dwelling in the land of the indifferent. Stand for something, lest you fall for anything.
*****
But, here's the thing. Now I'm going to contradict myself (as I often do). Here's where someone taps me on the shoulder and says to me--perhaps it's Isaac Van Arsdale Brown, or one of the other great preachers to occupy this pulpit before me...the voice says: you know, not even that will save you. None of that will save us from getting bird flu. Nothing magical will protect you from divorce and death, or will buy you a seat near the dessert table of heaven.
Because ours is the faith that we have already been saved. And when we know that, the aim of our life is not just to survive, it is to live a new life; a resurrection life. A passionate commitment to some cause other than myself comes not out of fear for what's to come, but because God has made a passionate commitment to me. God has gone so far as dying, for me.
But that kind of life doesn't mean escaping death; it means embracing death and resurrection. It means trusting that there is nothing in life or in death--not bird flu, not global warming, not the troubling diagnosis you just got, not the mortgage payment--that can separate us from the love of God in Jesus Christ.
So let go. There is nobody else up there to tell you otherwise. In fact that one "up there" has come down, enfleshed, to dwell with us, full of grace and truth.
Rejoice in the Lord always, and again I say, rejoice!December 17, 2006 Jeff Vamos
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